Time flies, and it is now almost two years since GroupM, the world’s biggest ad-buying agency, reorganized its early programmatic ad buying initiatives in to [M]Platform, a new cross-agency unit.

[M]Platform, the rationale went, would be a “suite” that comprises data analytics, audience insights, data scientists, technologists from across other GroupM divisions, including the Xaxis division.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Tanwir Danish, GroupM head of data and analytics platforms for North America, explains how [M]Platform is now being used to identify audiences.

“We look at identity in the most holistic fashion,” he says. “It has the traditional (identity) graph element where devices are getting connected but so does it connect more broadly on sort of the television side so we can understand did you bridge across total video landscape so whether it’s LTD, whether it’s linear, whether it’s video, that’s where we have been using identity for.

“As we walk through on that, we have created both in the foundational layer. We have brought in multiple data sets including set top box data, including Experian-like data, live rapid link type of data.

“(These are) multiple data sources with a singular view of a customer as the focus and then mapping out different attributes like their viewership, like the rating points that we get against them. And same for the digital behaviors.

“We have been able to execute incremental audiences where we can map out who our audiences were reached through their television and then sort of target them and their digital side.”

This video was produced in New York City at Identity in Focus: Understanding the Cross-Screen Consumer in a Fragmented World, a Beet.TV Leadership Forum, presented by 4INFO and hosted by Viacom. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.